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Shift in medicine behind restroom rifts?
Matt Reed, Florida Today
May 4, 2016
Why is so much of America, including Brevard Public Schools, suddenly arguing over which public restrooms should be used by transgender people? They've always lived among us. So why now?
I don’t buy that it's activism or political correctness alone.
A better theory: More young people today are growing up coping with not-yet-certain gender and less-than-common anatomy, thanks to a major shift in science and medicine that started 20 years ago.
More such kids probably need accommodations at school that they’re not getting. They deserve the same respect as you and me, but some instead are getting bullied. When school boards and companies try to help, social conservatives interpret it as left-wing activism, fight change and trash the kids.
I was clued in to this only last week while judging a graduating senior’s research presentation on “intersex” students at West Shore Jr./Sr. High School in Melbourne. I later discovered a body of scientific research that has gone overlooked as speculation rages in legislatures and on talk radio about perverts lurking in bathrooms and boys donning wigs to try to play girls’ soccer.
More 'intersex' kids
Here’s the deal, I think, with our schools.
About one in every 1,000 babies is born with intersex issues such as genitalia, chromosomal abnormalities or hormonal disorders that defy society’s purely intellectual definition of two genders, says a study published by the American Journal of Human Biology. At that rate, nearly 80 public-school students in Brevard County would have been born that way.
From the 1960s through the 1980s, pediatricians acted on the theory that gender was established mainly by a person’s genitalia and social upbringing. If a baby was born with “ambiguous” reproductive parts, doctors pressed the parents to choose a sex and put it on the birth certificate, perform “corrective” genital surgery, and refer the child to years of hormone therapy.
It was an inexact science. People who had been surgically and socially conditioned to be girls turned out to be hard-wired as men inside, and vice versa. A study of 94 intersex children at the University of Oklahoma found that more than half the genetic males who had been surgically and socially conditioned to be girls wound up “transitioning” back to acting as men – only without the necessary anatomy.
But medicine changed in the late 1990s – especially among pediatric urologists, endocrinologists and psychiatrists.
Gender identity, scientists figured out, is determined by a combination of early prenatal brain development, chromosomes, hormones and reinforcement from social environment – not what people look like below their belly buttons.
They also started to understand an array of genetic and hormonal disorders that can scramble children’s physical features and gender orientation. With adrenal hyperplasia, for example, girls with the normal XX chromosomes are exposed in the womb to such high levels of androgen (a male-development hormone) that they go on to look like boys despite having female sex organs.
From 2000 to 2005 – when today’s fifth- through 10th-graders were born – the prevailing medical outlook changed to delaying gender-assignment surgery and therapy until intersex children are mature enough to state their gender for themselves. Surgery is considered a "last resort" even for transgender adults.
In 2000, a survey of pediatric urologists found that almost all would have recommended raising a genetically male baby as a girl if born with no apparent penis. Five years later, two-thirds of the doctors said they would call that child a boy.
More teasing?
That shift may lead to healthier, happier adults.
But you can imagine what it has caused in their early years: more intersex kids teased for looking different or using the “wrong” bathroom in schools.
As part of her senior research project, West Shore student Dulcinea Olson surveyed guidance counselors at Brevard’s 16 high schools.
More than half said they had dealt with issues with an intersex student. Almost none had received any training or information on how to do it, Olson found.
Her survey pointed to the need for more research on intersex kids, she said. School Board Chairman Andy Ziegler, another project judge in the room, asked for her PowerPoint slides.
My guess is that most of this small but growing population of intersex kids just wants to be left alone to learn and hang out with their friends.
Our schools owe them the same respect, protection and access to facilities as any other students, regardless of the names we adults call them.
Shift in medicine behind restroom rifts?
Matt Reed, Florida Today
May 4, 2016
Why is so much of America, including Brevard Public Schools, suddenly arguing over which public restrooms should be used by transgender people? They've always lived among us. So why now?
I don’t buy that it's activism or political correctness alone.
A better theory: More young people today are growing up coping with not-yet-certain gender and less-than-common anatomy, thanks to a major shift in science and medicine that started 20 years ago.
More such kids probably need accommodations at school that they’re not getting. They deserve the same respect as you and me, but some instead are getting bullied. When school boards and companies try to help, social conservatives interpret it as left-wing activism, fight change and trash the kids.
I was clued in to this only last week while judging a graduating senior’s research presentation on “intersex” students at West Shore Jr./Sr. High School in Melbourne. I later discovered a body of scientific research that has gone overlooked as speculation rages in legislatures and on talk radio about perverts lurking in bathrooms and boys donning wigs to try to play girls’ soccer.
More 'intersex' kids
Here’s the deal, I think, with our schools.
About one in every 1,000 babies is born with intersex issues such as genitalia, chromosomal abnormalities or hormonal disorders that defy society’s purely intellectual definition of two genders, says a study published by the American Journal of Human Biology. At that rate, nearly 80 public-school students in Brevard County would have been born that way.
From the 1960s through the 1980s, pediatricians acted on the theory that gender was established mainly by a person’s genitalia and social upbringing. If a baby was born with “ambiguous” reproductive parts, doctors pressed the parents to choose a sex and put it on the birth certificate, perform “corrective” genital surgery, and refer the child to years of hormone therapy.
It was an inexact science. People who had been surgically and socially conditioned to be girls turned out to be hard-wired as men inside, and vice versa. A study of 94 intersex children at the University of Oklahoma found that more than half the genetic males who had been surgically and socially conditioned to be girls wound up “transitioning” back to acting as men – only without the necessary anatomy.
But medicine changed in the late 1990s – especially among pediatric urologists, endocrinologists and psychiatrists.
Gender identity, scientists figured out, is determined by a combination of early prenatal brain development, chromosomes, hormones and reinforcement from social environment – not what people look like below their belly buttons.
They also started to understand an array of genetic and hormonal disorders that can scramble children’s physical features and gender orientation. With adrenal hyperplasia, for example, girls with the normal XX chromosomes are exposed in the womb to such high levels of androgen (a male-development hormone) that they go on to look like boys despite having female sex organs.
From 2000 to 2005 – when today’s fifth- through 10th-graders were born – the prevailing medical outlook changed to delaying gender-assignment surgery and therapy until intersex children are mature enough to state their gender for themselves. Surgery is considered a "last resort" even for transgender adults.
In 2000, a survey of pediatric urologists found that almost all would have recommended raising a genetically male baby as a girl if born with no apparent penis. Five years later, two-thirds of the doctors said they would call that child a boy.
More teasing?
That shift may lead to healthier, happier adults.
But you can imagine what it has caused in their early years: more intersex kids teased for looking different or using the “wrong” bathroom in schools.
As part of her senior research project, West Shore student Dulcinea Olson surveyed guidance counselors at Brevard’s 16 high schools.
More than half said they had dealt with issues with an intersex student. Almost none had received any training or information on how to do it, Olson found.
Her survey pointed to the need for more research on intersex kids, she said. School Board Chairman Andy Ziegler, another project judge in the room, asked for her PowerPoint slides.
My guess is that most of this small but growing population of intersex kids just wants to be left alone to learn and hang out with their friends.
Our schools owe them the same respect, protection and access to facilities as any other students, regardless of the names we adults call them.
